Place Branding and the Consumption of Heritage

Dear Colleagues,

This special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) calls for original research on the synergisms between the geographic attributes of place (regions, countries, cities, towns and landscapes) and how consumption —through tourism or via consumer goods and services—creates a special niche in regional and global economies. While globalization aims to homogenize consumer tastes and preferences, public and private stakeholders increasingly draw on folklore, culture, history, and the tangential attributes of landscape to add value to consumer and tourist experiences. Together, these synergisms portend a sustainable approach to improving the human condition in an increasingly borderless and limitless realm of consumption and tourist experiences. This process, however, is fraught with tension as different narratives about authenticity and heritage emerge. Accordingly, we seek contributions from across the social sciences and business fields that use both case-study and empirically-anchored perspectives, as well as approaches at broader, theoretical and meta-analytical levels, to explore these aspects of place-branding.

Topics might range from the rise of agricultural tourism (wine-circuits and viticulture, specialty produce), micro-breweries, social justice museums (the American south, Eastern Europe), and the burgeoning literature on “Made in [fill in the country],” to ways in which local, regional, and national products enlist color, music, story-telling, cultural icons, and myth-making to couple consumption or tourism-marketing strategies with place attributes.

The Guest Editor guarantees a timely yet thorough review and turnaround of all submissions. Sustainability, whose Impact Factor this fifth year of open-access publication is 2.075, is an international, scholarly journal whose peer-reviewed papers highlight the  environmental, cultural, economic, and social sustainability of human beings. It is indexed by SCIE, SSCI, and other databases.

If you have interest in this special topic issue, please provide a 150-word abstract first before formal submission. Looking forward to your contribution.

Prof. Dr. Joseph L. Scarpaci
Guest Editor

References

Arnould, E. J., & Thompson, C. J. (2005). Consumer culture theory (CCT): Twenty years of research. Journal of consumer research, 31(4), 868-882.

Ashworth, G., & Larkham, P. (2013). Building a new heritage (RLE Tourism). Routledge.

Dinnie, K. (2015). Nation branding: Concepts, issues, practice. Routledge.

Fehimović, D. & Ogden, R. (Eds.) (2017) Branding Latin America: Strategies, aims, resistance. Lexington Books.

Graham, B. J., & Howard, P. (Eds.). (2008). The Ashgate research companion to heritage and identity. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Graham, B., Ashworth, G., & Tunbridge, J. (2016). A geography of heritage: Power, culture and economy. Routledge.

Holt, D.B. (2004). How brands become icons: Principles of cultural branding. Harvard Business School.

Manning, P. & Ulisashvili, A. 2008. “Our Beer”: Ethnographic brands in postsocialist Georgia. American Anthropologist 109 (4): 626-641.

Morales, E. & Scapraci, J.L. (2012). Marketing without advertising: Brand preference and consumer choice in Cuba. Routledge

Park, H.Y. (2014). Heritage tourism. Routledge.

Pettygrove, M., & Ghose, R. (2018). From “rust belt” to “fresh coast”: Remaking the city through food justice and urban agriculture. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 108(2), 591-603.

Pike, A. (2009). Geographies of brands and branding.  Progress in Human Geography, 33(5):  619-645.

Rivera, L. A. (2008). Managing “Spoiled” national identity: War, tourism, and memory in Croatia. American Sociological Review 73(4): 613-634.

Scarpaci, J.L. (2005), Plazas and barrios: Heritage tourism and globalization in the Latin American centro histórico. University of Arizona Press.

Scarpaci, J.L. (2007). Globalization tourists and heritage tourists in American culture: The case of Latin American historic districts. Material Culture 39 (2): 1-16.

Scarpaci, J.L. (2016). The meaning of objects. Material Culture 48:1-9.

Scarpaci, J.L., Coupey, E. & Reed, S. 2018. Artists as cultural icons:  The icon myth transfer effect as a heuristic for cultural branding. Journal of Product & Brand Management. 27(3): 320-333.

Scarpaci, J.L., Portela, A.H. (2009). Cuban landscapes: History, memory and place. Guilford.

Scarpaci, J.L., Sovacool, B.J., and Ballantyne, R. (2016). A critical review of the costs of advertising: A transformative consumer research perspective. Journal of Consumer Policy 39 (2): 1-22.

Schor, J.B. & Holt, D.B. (2000) The consumer society reader. The New Press.

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• place branding
• heritage
• consumer goods
• tourism
• cultural geography